Reflections
by ojuzu
Summary: Sixty-four animeverse ficlets inspired by the livejournal community 64damn prompts, eight per chapter. All characters. Feedback is *very* much appreciated.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Eight of sixty-four ficlets written for the livejournal community 64damn_prompts. #4 might eventually be expanded into a longer fic, possibly involving Ruka (among others). Because Mikage is awesome.  


* * *

It's _two goddamn A.M._, but Saionji finds himself climbing the stairs to the dueling arena anyway. (Using the stairs seems more honest, somehow. He's always felt better when he does things the hard way, for some reason he can't quite identify.) He doesn't even know what Touga wants him up there for -- it's not like they have anything to duel over, these days.

Why does he always do as Touga wants? He has nothing to gain by doing so, and it's not as if they're friends. (He is no fool, to be sure. Not these days.)

Even so, he is here now, at two in the goddamn morning.

Touga lounges against a parapet, smiling to himself when he sees Saionji stalking angrily towards him (empty-handed, for once). He has come, then, after all.

Saionji seems to lose his anger with proximity, growing less and less incensed until he is leaning (that's one of the big differences in their attitudes, Touga thinks -- he always lounges for best effect, but Saionji just supports himself) next to Touga and looking at him with the eyes of a teenager who wants to go _back to sleep, because he has class in the morning thank you very much_.

"Why have you called me here?" he asks.

Touga looks at him carefully, noting the fact that Saionji has slept in his day clothes, and has a blot of ink on one side of his face. He had not been jesting, then, about getting back to work now that the dueling was over. He suddenly feels that they must look very young -- too young to have seen all that they have. He is reminded of children born in wartime, who have experienced things many of their elders elsewhere have not, and who manage to seem unscarred if you know nothing of what has happened . . .

"Do you remember her?" Touga asks. "Tenjou Utena."

Saionji snorts. "Is _that_ all? Of course I do; did you think I had no brains at all?"

Touga relaxes, truly, now. He always seems relaxed -- it is one of his talents -- but he is sure Saionji can tell the difference.

"Thank you," he says, and means it.

* * *

Shiori wakes to find herself on the cold floor of the dueling arena, and laughs a little. Perhaps she is bitter, perhaps not. But she has fallen into the shadow of another's life, and now she is getting up again. (She's not sure how she means that. She isn't sure she cares.)

As she walks down the stairs, still a little weak, she remembers her train of thought that had been interrupted by Tenjou's arrival. This whole damn school is metaphor layered upon metaphor, truths fading into allegories. It's a strange thing, that something about the place seems to force everything into that pattern.

Idly, Shiori wonders what it would symbolize if she finally got around to repainting her room.

She suspects she would be unable to find any paint that wasn't orange.

* * *

Juri used to love just sitting outside and staring at the sky. These days she's far too busy to do such things -- but sometimes she pauses, and wonders why she doesn't do so anymore.

* * *

Mikage steps out into the world to discover he's missing several years of his life. What had he spent them doing, and where? _Who had he been_, for that period of his life? He knows his real name is Nemuro . . . something, he doesn't remember his given name anymore, but he thinks of himself as Mikage Souji. Why is that?

No matter. He finds his papers in a pocket of his laptop case, as well as some money (along with his teaching and counseling credentials; why had he been keeping them there?) and applies for a job at the local college. He likes working with students, he remembers that much.

He does, indeed, enjoy it quite a bit, and almost manages to forget that he has forgotten so much. Still, it bubbles up from time to time in his mind.

Mikage remembers going to see an abridged version of Hamlet with a group of other college students, mostly Western Lit. ones, and how many of them (though not himself) objected to the fact that bits of the play had been cut out, even though they knew it would be that way beforehand. It hadn't really bothered him.

He finds himself objecting a little, too, now.

* * *

Degrees, Kozue thinks. It is all about degrees, with them. How far she can push her brother, and how far he will eventually snap back.

(He hasn't yet, not really. But it's just a matter of time, and she's happy to wait.)

She wants Miki to be happy, she really does. But she refuses not to be a part of his life.

* * *

Seize the day, thinks Saionji to himself.

"You have no engagements after lunch?" he asks, making it sound more like a statement than a question.

Touga stretches suggestively (as always). "None."

"No fangirls?"

"No fangirls," Touga agrees. "But I thought you were done 'playing around'?"

Saionji smirks. "Everyone needs some vacation time."

"Even you?"

"Heh."

Saionji wins, of course. Touga has been spending too much time lounging attractively atop flat surfaces, and hasn't practiced once since his last bought with Saionji.

(Saionji decides to be nice, and cooks something for them and Nanami to enjoy together. He doesn't believe in true friendship, of course. He doesn't have to.)

* * *

Opposites, she'd called them. And that was obvious to anyone who knew them even a little. On one hand, Touga -- smooth, suave, intelligent and sociable. The kind of man you warned your daughters about (not that they'd pay any heed), who would either turn out to be nothing but trouble or the ticket to a great future. On the other, Saionji -- bitter, angry, isolationist, and a tendency to slap people. The kind of man you didn't bother warning your daughters about, because they'd stay far enough away on their own.

It was obvious.

Even if it wasn't quite true.

* * *

Some things run deeper than blood, Akio thinks. Power, hope, greed, loss, passion.

What else had gone missing when his sister left?

I'm not too sure how well I did on these, so if you have any opinions, please share them.


	2. nine through sixteen

A/N: If you haven't noticed by now, these don't all take place in the same time frame. They are character studies more than anything else, but considering how much the Utena cast grows and changes, it's really impossible for these to happen at any one point during or after the series.

Oh, and I cheated with the Juri ficlet here. It's set in movieverse, but I'm actually rather proud of it.

* * *

It's strange, but Shiori feels connected to Kozue.

They're completely different people. Shiori hates being looked down on, hates being inferior, and she does so much to escape that fate, even if it doesn't work. Kozue cares nothing for what others think, except for her brother. She wants to be free, like -- how did she put it? Like a wild animal, uncaring.

They have spoken perhaps twice.

Perhaps, someday, they will be friends.

* * *

Touga began wondering a year or two ago if Saionji was bipolar, with how he shifts from bitter to happy to the anger of a raging storm. Lately, he has simply accepted it as _how he is_, nothing else.

He mentions this to Nanami one day, and she laughs. "Oniisama, that is caused by three people -- Himemiya Anshii, Ohtori Akio, and _you_."

_Saionji,_ he thinks, _you have managed to deceive me in one more thing. Perhaps you are not such a fool after all._

* * *

Nanami _hates_ Chu-Chu.

Anthy is strange, and that bothers Nanami, but she _detests_ that creature. If she could kill it, she would, and if she simply never had to see it again, she would be almost equally overjoyed. Other things annoy her, but Nanami has never disliked anything so thoroughly with so little cause.

She will never admit to anyone that the reason she hates Chu-Chu is that Kyouichi can't stand the sight of the damn thing.

* * *

Sometimes Saionji just wants to go back to when he was younger, when things were simpler. When he and Touga were the best of friends.

Then he frowns at himself for thinking such nonsense, and returns to his work.

That is one thing he has always admi-- no, _respected_ Tenjou for. She wants to find her prince as she is now; she does not wish to return to the time when she met him.

He wants to go forward, he really does. But sometimes he cannot stop himself from looking back, even if it only makes things worse.

* * *

(Okay, I cheated on this one. Movieverse.)

Being at Ohtori had been like floating; it was a beautiful dream, in which strange things happened but you never questioned them. Everything was somehow glimmering and mutable, like water.

Juri spins Wakaba's steering wheel hard as she pulls off a flashy turn that would make even Fujiwara Takumi proud. Everything feels so _real_ now; they could crash and die this very moment. Or this one or this one or this one. The leather of the steering wheel feels warm against her hands, and she savours the thrill of being able to _do_ this impossible thing.

That is, to live.

She glances back at her companions. Miki smiles at her, and Saionji takes the wrench out of his mouth long enough to remark on how he'd never taken _her_ for a stick-shift driver. Juri glories in the knowledge that every day will be like this from now on, so bright and hard and real.

She can't wait to get outside.

* * *

Akio doesn't play chess.

Neither does Touga.

Anthy is quite good at it, but she really can't be bothered to play. She has better things to do.

Mikage doesn't even know how -- that's how little he cares for such things.

Saionji has about a fifty-fifty chance of beating anyone you put him up against, be they complete amateurs or grandmasters. No-one really knows why.

Utena has maybe heard of it once.

Nanami, oddly enough, is absolutely fantastic.

* * *

Nanami has a strange sense of duty.

She doesn't necessarily like Aiko, Keiko, or Yuuko, but if one of them shows up at her door distraught over something (as long as that something isn't her brother) she will sit them down with a mug of something warm and talk until things are resolved.

She will happily slap Kyouichi when he needs it, and has done so more than once.

She will even try to warn Tenjou, if she finds out something Tenjou should be wary of.

She tries to keep her little family happy -- spreading not-entirely-false rumours about Miki's music teacher in order to get him fired, making sure Juri doesn't linger too long when she sees someone with violet hair. Keeping Kyouichi from spending too much time brooding alone.

And then there is Touga.

Sometimes, she _hates_ her brother. After all, what duties can she do, now, for him?

* * *

One night after Anthy has left, Akio jerks up in bed, breathing hard. He has realised something, the same thing his sister had.

It is possible to leave this place.

Akio can go wherever he wishes, get a job somewhere, do something meaningful with his existence. He would never regain the power of Dios, but it is unlikely that he would ever do so in any case. He can leave all this work behind, all these carefully orchestrated systems and plans, for a life free of eternity.

He knows that he will wake in the morning to find his plans going beautifully, his new rose bride at work, his sister still unjustly torn from him. All midnight revelations forgotten. Everything (_almost,_ whispers a quiet voice in his head, _she's still gone_) in place.

But he is too tired right now to go anywhere, much less pack up and leave Ohtori for ever. Perhaps someday he will follow Anthy . . . but not this day.

* * *

You might like to go take a look at the prompt list -- I've come up with some pretty out-there stuff. It may amuse you to see just how far away from the original idea I've gone. (For instance, the prompt for that last one was 'rip', and the prompt for the Juri one was 'we all float on'.)


End file.
